


Observation

by samariumwriting



Series: Trans Claude AU [6]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Mild Angst, Pre-Canon, Trans Claude von Riegan, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 03:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20351698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Barely a week into the school year, and Ignatz had Claude figured out. Claude has no idea how, and he wants nothing more than to minimise the chance that any one else will see him the same way.





	Observation

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read other works in this series, this stands alone! :)

“Hey, uh, Claude, do you mind if I ask you something?” It was barely more than a week into his time at Garreg Mach, but Claude was already learning that when someone approached him with a question, he probably wasn’t going to like answering it.

“Fire away, Ignatz,” he said. There had been so many names and faces over the last week that he couldn’t keep up, but Ignatz was pretty distinctive. His room was directly below Claude’s own, and he usually sat in the front of their lessons. He was cute, in a nerdy sort of way.

“Are you- oh, it’s difficult to phrase this,” Ignatz said. “Sorry. I just maybe possibly was wondering if you, um, well, I-”

“You can say it, you know,” he said. He didn’t know exactly how nervous Ignatz tended to be on a daily basis, but there were only a couple of things he thought this could be. Neither were conversations he particularly wanted to have so early, but there wasn’t much he could do.

“Are you, ah, physically a woman?” he asked. Skies above, he looked so nervous, Claude almost wanted to laugh. Except he also just wanted to hide. He loathed this conversation and he’d barely had it three times.

“That’s an interesting question,” he said, rocking back on his heels. Maybe he could get Ignatz to drop it. “Why, did someone talk to you about it?”

“No, no, no one at all!” Ignatz said, and he was so flustered about it that Claude couldn’t work out if he was lying or just nervous. There were only a handful of people who knew at the Academy; Manuela, Lorenz, and Hilda, and maybe any other person, probably noble, who was keeping up to date with Alliance politics. Someone could have said something, and if so he needed to know.

“You sure about that?” he asked. “It’s not a good rumour to spread about someone, you know, and not even particularly juicy gossip to believe.”

“No, I- I worked it out myself,” he said. “But I suppose I was mistaken. My apologies, Claude. I didn’t mean anything by it, of course, I was just curious and normally I have a good eye for this kind of thing.”

“I see,” Claude said, forcing himself to keep up the easy smile on his face. The casual one, which betrayed nothing, which acted like this was just an incredibly casual conversation and he was not at all carefully choosing every single word. “So what makes you think that?”

“Oh, I- it sounds silly, now I’m saying it aloud,” he said, twisting his hands around the cord of his bag. “I’m an artist by hobby and I spend a lot of time drawing people. It’s your profile, shape, the way you move. All silly things that really don’t matter at all, I swear.”

“Interesting to hear,” he said. And sure, yeah, maybe it was interesting. But it also hurt, in the strange way that had mostly faded when he’d come to the Academy. It was the feeling of being far away but far, far too close at the same time. Of the eyes around him pinning him down and seeing far too much and seeing all the wrong things.

It was a feeling of wrong-ness, something irreparably broken that everyone could see, no matter how hard he tried to hide. But he looked up at Ignatz and feigned a smile. “Oh, okay!” Ignatz said. “Anyway, like I said, sorry to bother you.” With that, he practically ran off.

Ouch. Maybe he’d made a bit of a mistake there, brushing Ignatz off without a proper answer. Ignatz might have had his suspicions confirmed, and Claude had relinquished the control over that information by the way he’d reacted. But maybe he’d deflected in a way that meant Ignatz thought he’d got it wrong. He didn’t know.

Either way, he felt absolutely awful. Definitely time to drown his sorrows in a large meal and target practise until his brain went numb.

-

Claude should have known that the conversation he’d had with Ignatz wouldn’t satisfy him and it wouldn’t be the end of the issue. Yet he was somehow still surprised to feel and see Ignatz’s eyes on him extensively for the next few days. In the training grounds, in the library, in the classroom, when they passed each other in the entrance hall.

It was uncomfortable; it was exactly the kind of gaze Claude had been apprehensive about when thinking about coming to the academy. He was being scrutinised for something and he didn’t know how to just talk about it. He didn’t want to talk about it.

He couldn’t trust Ignatz to keep quiet about it. He knew that, really, it wasn’t too much of a big deal, and Ignatz seemed like a nice enough person. But there were all kinds of people who weren’t so nice that could get that information out of someone if it got too far away from him, too widespread, and he didn’t think he could deal with that so early on in his time at the monastery.

He was barely more than a week in and already he wanted to throw in the towel with keeping quiet and it being difficult and furtive. He hated hiding, he hated being unable to trust anyone with simple information about himself. But at the same time it was so, so important that he kept this kind of thing to himself.

If he started sharing his life history with people, he’d be more vulnerable to challenge. Politically, his grandfather was already struggling. If there was no hint of a secret or a conspiracy then his future was a lot safer. But if rumours got rolling about hiding something specific, and people started asking about where he was born, how his parents had raised him...the fragile consensus could so easily end.

That was why he had to end this, to stop the rumours before they could start. He liked Ignatz, but if the boy started asking other people for their opinions then it could get around faster than Claude could stop it, and if it did then he didn’t know what he would do.

So, when Ignatz had been watching him for twenty minutes almost without break while he was sitting in the library (well, he kept glancing between Claude and his book, but Claude didn’t imagine much reading had actually happened), he decided to intervene. He made eye contact with Ignatz and mouthed ‘follow me’. Ignatz looked away immediately, flustered, but when Claude noted his place in his book and left, the boy followed.

Claude kept walking until he found somewhere not often frequented by anyone, but especially not students. “You’ve been watching me,” he said. Maybe it sounded a bit more like an accusation, because Ignatz practically squirmed under his gaze.

“I’m sorry if I was bothering you,” he said. “I just- I was thinking about what you said, and trying to work out where I’d gone wrong, but you-”

“You didn’t go wrong,” he said. “You were right. About what you said before. And I asked why you thought that because I had no idea how those things could tell other people about all of that.”

“I’m really, really sorry if I wasn’t meant to ask,” Ignatz said. “I mean, my father had mentioned a granddaughter, but I can be a bit scatterbrained with things like that and I thought I could just be mistaken. But I didn’t know, and-”

“It was fine to ask,” he said. “Just don’t spread it around, okay? It can be just between the two of us.”

“R-right,” Ignatz said. Claude wouldn’t pretend to understand his tone of voice there, but if he’d agreed then it probably wasn’t a problem. “Sure, Claude. Sorry again.” He escaped pretty quickly after that, squeaking out something about an assignment even though they didn’t have any yet.

Well, that could have gone worse. Could have gone better. Now Claude just had to work out how, exactly, Ignatz had worked it out, and then work out how to get rid of whatever it was that had given him away. He hated feeling like this.

-

Nothing he could think of worked. The words Ignatz had said when Claude asked why he thought that were burned into his brain, but he couldn’t get it to make sense. He couldn’t think of anything he could do about it on his own.

That problem led him to only one conclusion; he had to ask Ignatz for help. “Hey, Ignatz!” Claude called across the training grounds. “I knew I’d find you here.”

“Yes,” Ignatz said, lowering his bow and turning to look at Claude. “Probably because I drill like this every day.” He didn’t sound annoyed to be interrupted, though, and he chuckled as he spoke, so Claude felt like he was off to a pretty good start. “Did you want something, Claude?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, watching Ignatz place the training bow and arrows back in their usual place. “It shouldn’t take too long, I just wanted to pick your brain on something for a bit.”

“Go ahead,” he said, “though I’m not sure how much I’d be able to help.”

“No, I think you will,” he said. He glanced around the training grounds for the third time since he’d entered. The only person there was Felix, and if he was listening, he probably didn’t care. “You said I move like a woman, so how do I move like a man?”

“Oh!” Ignatz said. “I, uh, it might take a bit of explaining, I don’t think I’ve really said it aloud before. Do you have some time?”

“Sure,” he said. “Take it away, I have all the time in the world for this.” Maybe most people weren’t as observant as Ignatz, and maybe most people didn’t care if he moved slightly strangely compared to everyone else. But there were trained professionals here and he didn’t like the feeling that people could find this kind of thing out without him telling them.

“Actually,” Ignatz said, and Claude saw his glance shift to Felix, “it might be better if I could do some sketches to show you. Do you mind if we move to my room?”

“Whatever you want, really,” he replied. “You’re the one doing me a favour, don’t worry so much.”

“W-well it’s just I feel bad!” he said. “Because I kept asking you about it when you didn’t-”

“Ignatz,” Claude said, stopping him at the training ground doors. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” It had been annoying, sure, and slightly distressing when he was asked for the first time and when he finally got the information as to why Ignatz had known, but he didn’t mind. Friendships were about giving and taking, and Ignatz was doing him a favour by explaining this. He really was.

“If you’re sure,” he said, starting back down towards his room.

“I am,” he said firmly. “If you want to do me a bunch of favours then please do, but this makes us even. I swear it.” As he spoke, he put his hand over his heart and grinned at Ignatz, who hesitantly returned his smile. By the powers that be, that boy was so timid.

“Anyway,” Ignatz said, sitting down at his desk and grabbing a pad of paper. “I’ll try and do this verbally, but if I get stuck I’ll try and sketch it. Just tell me if you’re not following.” Claude nodded, and Ignatz launched right into it.

“Okay, so the most noticeable thing in someone is their body shape. You have a really neutral figure, you’re not all built up like Raphael or dainty like Lysithea, so that’s not really something you need to worry about. But lots of women walk with their legs closer together than men, and men have a broader stance.”

“So I just need to put my legs further apart?” he asked, frowning down at his feet. He’d never thought about it before. Until Ignatz had mentioned it, he’d never even thought that the way he moved could give people implicit cues about himself.

“And move your hips less,” he said. “Your uniform means no one can see your body shape too closely, but it can still show in your gait.” His uniform was designed like that on purpose, so it was good to know that Ignatz thought it was doing its job. Claude trusted his opinion; they hadn’t known each other all that long, but he could tell Ignatz had a good eye.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Um, not really, actually,” he said. “You eliminate most of the main combat movement differences because you’re tall and have a long reach. I don’t know if, um, when you fight, you’re bothered by-”

“Just say my chest, Ignatz,” he said with a laugh. “I’m sure that if it was in any way visible when I was fighting, you would have noticed. You don’t need to think about that.”

“No, you’re right,” he said. “That was it, really. The things I noticed were sort of based on context, and they’re not really anything you can change. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You gave some good advice, and I’ll think about it. So we’re even, and you don’t have to worry about whether I’m bothered by you knowing or asking. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, a slightly less nervous smile on his face. “Thanks, Claude. It’s good to know that all the figure studying I did can come in handy for something…”

“It did,” he said firmly, and Ignatz’s smile widened. “You’ve got a good eye. I’d love to see some of those drawings you do at some point.”

“O-oh, okay,” he said. “Uh, not now. I have to prepare things if anyone wants to see my work, I get embarrassed if I show the wrong thing, and I-”

“I’ll wait with bated breath,” he said, heading back out of Ignatz’s room. “Thanks again!” He closed the door, and then stared down at his feet. Right. Now how could he practise walking differently without looking like an idiot...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :) if you have any thoughts or ideas as to where I could take this series please hmu here or on twitter (@samariumwriting)


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